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TUBI HORROR: "Medusa" from 2020!

It's like "The Fly," except with U.K. sex workers eating people at a trailer park. Trust me - it's not as much fun as it sounds.


The Medusa mythos seems like a can't-miss prospect for a modern horror film. It's got shades of feminism, erotica and the supernatural, plus ample opportunities to tell a rare sympathetic tale about a genre flick antagonist. There's a lot of classical Greek tragedy to the character, and in the hands of a skillful enough writer and director, I'm sure there's a downright fantastic movie to be made somewhere, at some point, at some time.

Well, "Medusa" from 2020 isn't that film. In fact, its resemblance to the mythology is basically just nominal. The people behind this straight-to-streaming farce didn't even BOTHER retaining the most iconic aspect of the folklore figure - if you're looking to watch amorous suitors got turned into stone with a demonic stare, I'm afraid you're going to have to stick to your beat-to-shit VHS copy of "Clash of the Titans."

I really can't sugarcoat this one. No matter how you approach it, "Medusa" is not a very good movie. But as unremarkable as it may be on the whole, I suppose it does have a *few* moments that are decent - or, failing that, certain plot dynamics that COULD'VE been parlayed into a much better movie.

But hey, what can I say? It's a movie about drug-addicted prostitutes in the United Kingdom turning into snake-beasts and eating off misogynists' faces. Even if it's not good, like any of us can resist a premise THAT tantalizingly trashy and exploitative?

The film begins with a lot of up-close shots of snakes flicking their tongues out and drooling all over the place. From there we cut to a motor home park, where this one guy gets seduced by a chick with huge knockers ... and a face that looks like one of the Goombas from that ill-fated live-action "Super Mario Bros." movie. Of course, the lizardess mounts our unsuspecting prey and takes a huge chunk out of his jugular. So yeah, I guess that means there isn't going to be a second date, huh?

Then we cut to this couple doing drugs and there's a couple of "jokes" about human trafficking and the boyfriend/pimp is apparently dropping off our melancholic blonde lead at the same trailer park where that one guy got his face chewed off. So she mopes around for a bit, and just so you know EVERYBODY in this movie has thick European accents, so you damn better turn on the subtitles if you wanna' know what's going on. By the way, the blonde chick is named "Carly," which, yeah, is a pretty good name to call a white girl that sexes guys for free drugs.

So Carly puts on her dandiest denim jacket, crawls under a boardwalk and shoots up some smack while sad music plays in the background and seagulls squack overhead. Then there's a scene where she styles an old friend's hair and she makes fun of her for wearing so much glitter back in the day and then Carly and her pimp/boyfriend go for a drive and he tells her "she needs to get her head into the game" and she ends up going over to this one guy's trailer and what do you know, he has a rattlesnake in a plastic tub. So naturally, he asks Carly to dance and she obliges ... with a lap dance, it is to be noted.

Hmm. That *DOES* seem like the kind of shade a lizard-woman would wear ...

Not that you didn't know it was going to happen, but yes, that aforementioned snake does escape and bits Carly right on the thigh mid striptease. She wakes up the next morning with a nasty wound on her leg, which she can't help but claw and scratch and finger. By the way, the actress who plays Carly looks a lot like Elisabeth Moss, except, I don't know, maybe a little bit different looking around the neck and clavicle area. Yeah, I know, it's a weird thing to observe, but trust me, once you see it, you'll know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

So Carly looks in the mirror and her eyes are becoming all reptilian and all her friends think she's just having another drug-related episode. This prompts Carly to actually shoot up some more heroin, and a mere thirty minutes into the movie they finally make it clear that the motor home park is actually a mobile bordello. Cue some suggestive sapphic dancing, then it's time for Carly to bump uglies with some grody middle-aged man for money. She starts chewing on his neck veins and he gets really weirded out and asks for a refund, then Carly goes to the bathroom and realizes she has teeth like Dracula now. Oh, and her saliva is acidic, which REALLY compromises her ability to market blow jobs, for sure.

Then there's this nightmare sequence where all of the lighting turns red and this guy's arm crumbles apart in her hands. Then she goes to the trailer next door and drinks a Cosmopolitan at, like, 10 in the morning. Then she goes into a tent with Christmas lights wrapped all around it and inside is that guy she gave a lap dance to, except now he's dead and his skin is all scabby and it looks like something yanked his jugular out. How interesting.

Then the pimp-boyfriend shows up again and slaps her around and calls her a "daft twat." So she rips his throat open and snaps his neck like she was in a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. Then she steals his car, not even bothering to wash the gallon or so of blood off her face.

So Carly's skin begins to shed (you know, like a snake) then it's time for her to take care of another paying customer. He calls her a "bitch" so she has to break out a baseball bat and smack him upside the head a couple of times. Then she sprouts fangs again, only for the client to grab the baseball bat and hit a home run off her noggin.

When Carly wakes up her face is all scabby and gross. She starts yanking the skin off her cheek and the layer beneath is basically all lizard hide. Then she starts stalking the guy who clubbed her with a baseball bat down a dark alley and she spits acid in his face and he gets all melty and its all gross and awesome. Man, I *LOVE* seeing shit like that in movies.

And that segues into the film's grand finale. Carly gets stabbed in the chest a couple of times, but what's this? Are a bunch of weirdo goth girls in black lipstick LITERALLY coming out of the woodworks to perform some sort of unholy chant? Why yes, they are. Carly's eyes turn reptilian again and she kills the madame who's been pimping her out the whole movie, then a buncha' women with torches stand behind her and hail their "serpent queen," and for the final scene, a buncha' snakes pop out of Carly's hair ... just like the Medusa mythology. Time for the end credits to roll, folks.

Oh no! He's BEEN, uh, FRozen Yogurted to death?

The movie was written by the tandem of Scott Jeffrey and Matthew B.C., with the latter also serving as the director. Both appear to be relative newcomers per their IMDB entries, so there's not a whole lot to talk about when it comes to their respective filmographies.

The actress playing Carly is Megan Purvis, who is probably best known for playing the titular character in 2019's "Hilda."

Rounding out the rest of the cast are neo-B staples Sarah T. Cohen (yes, she of "ClownDoll" and "Witches of Amityville Academy" fame), Nicola Wright (who you might recognize from flicks like "Exorcist Vengeance" and the '90s TV show "Jupiter Moon") and Brahmedo Shannon Ramana, who went on to play Saif Rahman in "The Bay." So yeah, nobody you've ever heard of before, which I suppose is pretty much par for the course for a production of its ilk.

Really, the biggest problem with "Medusa" is that it plays the material WAY too serious. Granted, topics like sex work and drug addiction are heavy topics, but considering it's a movie that ultimately turns into a cheese-fest about a snake-worshipping feminist cult. maybe the material should've been approached with a more tongue in cheek mentality?

Still, the acting is pretty good, the special effects are decent and the pacing, until the last 20 minutes or so, are respectable enough. It's a movie that has potential, but it just collapses under the weight of trying to tell a "real" horror story - especially one with so many deep and nuanced sociocultural issues lurking underneath the surface as subplots.

Alas, if you didn't get your fill of "Medusa," rest assured - the sequel, subtitled "Queen of the Snakes," is currently in pre-production according to IMDB.

Here's hoping they have a little more fun with the concept than in part one - for ALL of our collective s(n)akes.

XOXO, TOXICKA
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